The silence stretches for one beat.
Then another.
“Can I talk to you?” she says. Her eyes flick to Connor, then back to me. “To both of you.”
Both of us?
Connor pinches the bridge of his nose, looking like a man who has just accepted the worst possible outcome, and lets out a quiet, “Shit.”
“Yeah,” I say, and my voice comes out small. “Yeah, okay.”
Well. We’re officially screwed.
CHAPTER 10. Connor
I’m nodding at the right moments, smiling when I’m supposed to, making fishing jokes that have Daniel and Brad laughing into their whiskey glasses. Perfect son-in-law material. Or at least a convincing imitation of it.
But my eyes keep drifting across the room to where Noah stands by the window with Rick.
Their bodies are angled toward each other in a way that speaks of history. Familiarity. Years of knowing exactly how to occupy the same space. Every laugh that reaches me feels like a hook sinking deeper into my chest. I should be fully present in this conversation about Irish streams versus American lakes, but all I can think about is the way Rick leans a little too close to Noah, and the way Noah doesn’t step back.
Fuck.
“So you’re saying Irish trout actually fight harder?” Daniel asks, his face bright with amusement as he gives the whiskey in his glass a swirl. “Even though they’re smaller?”
I force my attention back to him.
God. I like fishing talk. I’m good at fishing talk. But right now every bit of my focus is on Noah, and this feels like torture.
“Absolutely,” I say, with a smile I hope looks real. “Brown trout especially. They’ll make you work for every inch of line. It’s like they’ve got something to prove.”
Daniel and Brad both chuckle, exchanging an amused look.
Yeah. Apparently I’m better at charming the parents than I am at charming my own fake boyfriend, who’s still angry with me and has apparently decided to ignore me for the rest of the evening.
“It’s the current, right?” Brad asks. “Makes them harder to reel in?”
“Pretty much.” I force my attention back to Brad, though my eyes cut to Noah again and catch him nodding at something Rick says. “In a stream, even a smaller trout can make you work. They’ll tuck into the current, dive for cover, run the line under rocks if they can. Back home, half the fun was standing there in miserable weather, soaked through, trying to bring one in before it slipped the hook.”
Brad laughs, lifting his glass. “That sounds like Maine. Daniel and I once spent an entire freezing morning at my cabin trying to catch trout and came back with nothing but wet socks.”
Daniel grins. “And a lot of excuses.”
They fall into the story, and I nod when I’m supposed to, but the thread of the conversation is already slipping away from me. My attention drifts right back to Noah.
I know it’s stupid. I know I have no right to feel anything about who he talks to, or who makes him smile, or whetherhe still looks at Rick like some part of him remembers being loved by him. But I keep watching anyway, waiting for Noah to pull back, to glance over, to give me any sign that he hasn’t completely shut me out.
Then Rick says something I can’t hear, and Noah smiles.
It’s not the tight, polite smile he’s been wearing since dinner started. This one is softer. Easier. The kind I’ve been trying to pull out of him all evening and failing miserably.
My stomach twists.
Noah barely looked at me through dinner, and since everyone left the table and spread out around the room, he hasn’t said a single word to me. Not one.
I know he’s still shaken by what happened with Maya. Of course he is. Having your sister overhear most of the argument about your fake-boyfriend lie is bad enough. Having to sit her down afterward and tell her why you lied in the first place is a whole other kind of awful.
Her reaction was better than I expected, though the conversation itself was still a complete mess.
